Buffet Crampon R13 Professional Clarinet

                               

Introduction: Up until I bought this horn, I had been using a Vito Resotone and a Yamaha YCL-255 for most of my college clarinet work. I was told that I had to upgrade as soon as possible and was recommended that I buy specifically a new Buffet Crampon R13, and that was exactly what I did. I didn’t have much money or time, so I bought this horn from the open box section of Woodwind and Brasswind for somewhere around $3300, which was much cheaper than the regular listing price of around $4000.  It was listed as new with an open package. It came to me in the original packaging with all of the factory accessories which included a new unbranded reed, a nickel plated ligature and mouthpiece cap (but no stock mouthpiece oddly enough), a cleaning cloth, and some cork grease. I was most excited when it arrived and was excited to show it off to my teacher, but then COVID happened and I was unable to do so for about 4 months. During this time I played the horn quite a bit and got used to its tendencies before lessons started online the next semester.

General Info: This is a professional model clarinet with a Grenadilla wood body and nickel plated keys. It was manufactured in 2020 by Buffet Crampon. The R13 is still manufactured and sold by Buffet Crampon.

Playability and Tuning: Upon playing this horn for the first time, I found that it had a very centered sound. I also found that it played about 10 cents flat, but I wasn’t worried as I knew the wood would need to warm up. After about 45 minutes of playing however, the thing was still flat in all registers and I was in a room with normal temperatures and climate control. I would later learn that this horn was significantly flat no matter where I played it. As I played it more though, I found that tuning wasn’t consistent across all registers or even between individual notes. In other words, this horn could not play in tune with itself. Going across the break was not great, as the throat tones were about 10 cents flat and the lower clarion was a little bit sharp. Not to mention, there were so many stuffy notes that just didn’t speak well at all. The low C# was flat and stuffy, and the same was true for the throat tones. This will be the first clarinet I have ever played where the throat tones were too flat. The throat Bb on this horn was probably the worst I have ever heard for tone and pitch, even when compared to a cheap off brand clarinet. My clarinet teacher suggested that I try some different mouthpieces and different length barrels, but none of this did any good and sometimes these even caused new issues. I tried my BD5, a D’Adarrio Reserve Evolution, and a B45 and nothing changed. It was also very inconsistent as I never knew how the horn was going to play, and that varied greatly from day to day. I understand that all wood horns change with the climate, but this was overboard. Sometimes it would play fine, and other times it was so out of tune and stuffy that I couldn’t even give an in tune concert A. It was so bad that I went back to my student horn which, might I add had none of these issues, and used that for the remainder of the semester and the concerts. Not at all what I expected from a $3000 professional horn that is supposed to be the golden standard for clarinet manufacturing.

Construction and Build Quality: At first I was so excited by this horn and the reputation of the R13 that I didn’t even question the quality of it. As I played it more during the COVID summer and compared it to my other horns, I noticed quite a few significant issues. First off, I discovered that apparently this horn was cracked in two places from the factory and was missing a chunk of wood from the bell around the ring which you can see in the second photo. The two cracks were in the bell tenon and the lower joint tenon. Thankfully they didn’t worsen while I had it, but it was just unbelievable that this horn arrived in this condition.  Then there were the awful tenons themselves. From the day I got the clarinet, it was incredibly hard to get together. I wasn’t worried though and started applying cork grease thinking it would get better, but it didn’t. The barrel routinely got stuck on the clarinet and I would take it to my teacher to get it removed so that I didn’t damage anything by forcing it off, but it would just stick again the next time I played. I tried sanding down the corks, but this did nothing. The horn continued to stick together at both the barrel and the bell regardless, and I concluded that the tenons were just made incorrectly and didn’t fit right. The keywork felt good and was positioned well and truly that was about the only good thing I have to say about this horn, but the fact that they used cheap plastic adjustment screws on it was kind of disappointing to me as most student horns have metal ones. I am always careful to clean and wipe off my horn after I play, yet after about 3 months of playing the nickel plating was wearing off the keys which you can see in the third photo on the upper joint. Also, the ligature that this horn came with was absolutely useless. The screws would bind and the whole thing would slip if you tired to use it. The mouthpiece cap didn’t even fit around the ligature, and its plating began coming off after a couple of months too.

Case: The case that came with this horn was pretty unacceptable, especially for a professional model instrument. The case was cheaply made and the outer leather looking material was pealing off after a couple of months, and I am not rough on instruments. The plastic locks didn’t even lock and just spun around when you tried to turn them, and the inside fabric around the case felt thin and cheap. The biggest problem I had with the case is that the horn moved around significantly while inside the case, especially the upper joint. The upper joint would be out of its place every time I opened the case, and the lower joint had about an inch that it could slide back in forth in. I could even hear the instrument moving around when I was carrying it. The whole point of a case is to keep the instrument from moving, and this one certainly didn’t do that. Buffet should provide a properly working case for their horns. I have vintage student horns that have much better cases in all respects than this. This case really feels like it was made to get the job done with the expectation that it will be replaced eventually which is not acceptable given the price point of this horn.

Conclusion: To be honest, this horn was quite a letdown and certainly didn’t live up to the reputation of the R13 line that I have always heard about. The playability and build quality of the horn were very poor, and the case not fitting the instrument was unacceptable. Now I get that most people who by an R13 replace the case and the cheap accessories anyway, but my question is why even include them? It just makes the instrument feel cheap when the accessories are junk, and what about those who can’t afford a replacement case because they spent all of their money on the horn? I also understand that I didn’t try this horn before I bought and the smarter thing would have been to try several in person and pick one from those. But I also feel that at this price point instruments should be way more consistent. There shouldn’t be that many inconsistent horns when you are paying upwards of $3000 for an instrument in my opinion. And that still doesn’t excuse the case and junk accessories and the general build quality issues. Another interesting comment is that I had a friend in college who tried several new R13s in 2021, and the one she ended up picking also had the tuning and tenon cork problems. Her case also didn’t fit her instrument well much like mine, so this is not an isolated incident. This really makes me question the quality control practices at Buffet. I am also wondering how this clarinet passed the inspection that WWBW claimed to give it. All of that to say, I sold this horn in early 2022 and I was not sad to see it go and thankfully got my money back out of it. Now am I saying all R13s are bad? No not at all. I am just saying that I personally have not had good experiences with the R13 and this has kind of hurt my opinion of Buffet. This lack of attention to detail and poor quality is not what I expected from the “benchmark in clarinet manufacturing.” Now you might have a new R13 and love it, and that is awesome and I say play it and enjoy it. But for me personally, I am not a fan of these new R13s and I would not buy another or recommend them to anyone based on these experiences. If I learned one thing from this, it is that you should always try before you buy and never go on recommendations alone.